"Unique Magic & Evil Protagonist." Ryo Reviews: Reverend Insanity

How far I've read it: 3 volumes, or 4 according to webnovel.com but they split the first volume. About 1,400,000 words of the as-of-yet over 3,200,000 word that are available.

Reverend Insanity is a xianxia story that have a unique if bonker magic system, set in seemingly typical setting but a bit weird and bonker deeper on. It stars a transmigrator, except it's been 500 years since he transmigrated. MC is an evil cultivator, and had just slaughtered people to attain time-travel power, but he is chased by his enemies, and in his last moment activated the untested time-travel power.

He travelled into his childhood, and equipped with all sorts of knowledge and secrets, plus cunning and evil tendencies, he sets out his journey. The story is mostly him exploiting secret knowledge and exploiting people, i.e. MC outplays all, kinda wish-fulfillment-y, until the end of a volume, where the stakes are real and the MC had to truly brain-awesome his way through shits.

The magic system is a xianxia cultivation, i.e. there are concrete power levels, progress require resources, etc. The unique thing here is that the magic you do is "Gu", which are mystical bug that cultivator can subdues, allowing them to do magic things like shooting fireball, generating currency, and commanding an army like real-life RTS. They are obtained through catching them in the wild, buying them on an auction, provided by the clan, through treasure hunting, or by combining lower-level Gu into higher-level Gu.

Was it a good read? It's an enjoyable read, not great but okay. I can't exactly root for MC since he has evil ideologies and do terrible things, but I quite like the unique magic system. I was introduced to it under the premise that the magic system is unique and the setting is chinese astrological bullshits, and I think I enjoyed it more because of that, but I can't quite promise the latter part of it, since it won't come up until quite later, and it's not really played up that much. Anyway, give it a read if you're interested I suppose, but I won't force you to read it or something.

Oh also it's a chinese translation, so some people finds it a bit awkward to read, although I myself barely noticed, and compared to some other chinese translations I say this is pretty smooth.

Link to it on webnovel.com, on boxnovel.com.

"Generic but enjoyable." Ryo Reviews: Ys: The Oath in Felghana

For the record ARPGs I've tried are (off the top of my head):

1. Legend of Mana, which I love.
2. Secret of Mana, which I don't quite like. I have problem with how traversable and non-traversable areas aren't quite so clear.
3. Trials of Mana, which is better but I still don't quite like. At this point I realize that I like LoM because it's my childhood and the story is unique.
4. Chrono Trigger, which I dropped because I don't know what to do in the beginning. Definitely gonna retry this someday.
5. The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap, which I used to enjoy, but recent playthrough leaves me finding myself too slow at solving the puzzle, so I dropped.
6. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, which was a meh.
7. The Legend of Zelda, which the idea I find really intriguing and enjoyed a bit, but I only played a bit. Metroidvania's probably scratch the itch better.
8. Zelda II: The Adventure of link, which I find surprisingly enjoyable, but I only played just a bit longer.
9. Is metroidvania counts as ARPG? apparently it's action-adventure but have RPG elements. Whatever, I loved Aria of Sorrow, then the Symphony of the Night, then Dawn of Sorrow too, so basically the main lineup. I don't quite like the rest of it.

Anyway, discounting metroidvanias, which are too different anyway, Ys: The Oath of Felghana is something I actually can have a good time on aside from Legend of Mana. The combats are fun, and the traversable areas is distinguished enough. It's also really gentle; the normal combat is already easy enough, but enemies drops buffs and healings, and checkpoints can indefinitely restore your life. There are infinite retry, and if you find the boss's to be too difficult, you'll be given option to lower the difficulty after dying a certain times. There's harder mode, but I only tried normal mode so idk.

That said, the boss battle are repetitive, and the story and characters are generic. There's not much merit except that the act of playing it is fun. I only played maybe a quarter of it, but I definitely wasn't impressed.

Edit: Oh, I've also played Alundra, which have similar problem to Minish Cap, Shining Soul, which in similar situation to Zelda II, and Summon Night: Swordcraft Story, which I used to enjoy and play almost to completion, but haven't played it again since.

"Can anyone recommend things to enjoy or fandoms to join?"

Comment from discussion Can anyone recommend things to enjoy or fandoms to join?.